How to Send iCal Invites to Outlook

By J.S. Copper

When sending invitations with Apple's iCal program, the recipient receives an email with an attached .ics file that allows the recipient to add the event to their calendar and accept or decline the invitation. In sending out these invitations to an Outlook user, the functionality gets lost in translation and is not properly formatted or accessed with Microsoft Outlook. Editing the way iCal sends out the invitations, albeit a daunting task, helps to improve the Mac and PC interaction.

Things You'll Need

Apple Mac OS XiCalMail

Step 1

Open the Applications folder. Navigate to the iCal application. Right-click (Control-click) the iCal icon and select \"Show Package Contents.\"

Step 2

Step 3

Highlight \"Mail.applescript.\" From the menu bar, select \"Edit\" > \"Copy.\" On the Desktop, paste (\"Edit\" > \"Paste\") the file as a backup. Return to the original \"Mail.applescript.\"

Step 4

Right-click the file and select \"Open with AppleScript.\" The AppleScript Editor will open.

Step 5

Navigate about midway down the script to the heading \"on send_mail_sbrp(subjectLine, messageText, myrecipient, invitationPath.\" Highlight the entire section starting with that heading and ending with \"end send_mail_sbrp\" and press \"Delete.\" (Don't worry, you made a back up in Step 3).

Step 6

Highlight, copy and paste the entire following entry within AppleScript in place of the entry you deleted in Step 5:

if ((get length of listOfAccounts) is 1) thenset theAccountTouse to get first item of listOfAccountselseset theAccountTouse to ¬choose from list listOfAccounts ¬default items (get first item of listOfAccounts) ¬with prompt ¬\"Please select which mail account to send the invitation from:\" ¬without multiple selections allowed and empty selection allowedend if

-- open and read the iCal event file to insert into an e-mailset myEventFileHandle to ¬open for access myfile without write permissionset myEventFileContent to read myEventFileHandleclose myEventFileHandle

-- write the new e-mail to a temp fileset myEventFileHandle to ¬open for access (POSIX file aliasTempMail as string) with write permissionwrite myNewEmailText starting at 1 to myEventFileHandleclose myEventFileHandle

Step 8

Tips & Warnings

Be extremely careful when editing the AppleScript. If you have made an error, replace the \"mail.applescript\" file in iCal's Resources folder with the one you saved to your desktop, and start the process over from the beginning.